


Orlando

by betts



Series: Kinkmeme Fills [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BDSM Scene, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape Recovery, Rape Roleplay, WTFfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 20:02:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17773349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: For the prompt: Clarke was raped as a teenager, she had some pretty dark issues after that and couldn't be intimate for a long time.After doing a copious amount of research she learned that sometimes in the BDSM community victims go to dungeons to recreate their attack; it's supposed to be empowering, because at any moment she can say the word and it stops. She decides to contact one of them, and they arrange a time and place and she heads out to relive her ordeal on HER terms.Bellamy is the dom she's given. He matches the height and build of her attacker but is nothing like him.Winner of the 2019 BFWA After Dark for Best Dom/Sub





	Orlando

**Author's Note:**

> You know I couldn't pass this one up.

It happened at a Hilton hotel in Orlando, Florida, right outside Universal Studios when she was fourteen years old. They’d just built the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and Abby had thought Clarke would love to see it, but Clarke had been an angsty teenager and considered it a cash cow enterprise. Moreover, she was a heavy reader for the solitude of it. To enter this space with hundreds or even thousands of people who had all lived what she had seen as this private little world — she hated it. She endured one day of it, tried the butterbeer which she found disappointing, and told her mother the next day she’d rather stay in the hotel room because she wasn’t feeling well. They’d gone with their parents’ close friend Marcus, who had always been like an uncle to her. He drove her to softball practice and school dances, bought her ice cream when she was sad. He was single and handsome, an ever-present shadow in her life that she never questioned. She was at his house when she first got her period, and shamefully asked if he had any pads or tampons, and he went to the store and bought some for her. He seemed so strangely proud of her for getting her period. She always thought that was weird.  
  
He offered to stay back with her that day in Orlando. She had been put off by it at first, insisting she could take care of herself, but was secretly grateful for the company. Marcus had a bottomless wallet and an adventurous streak. She imagined she could goad him into something fun. He, however, had a different idea.   
  
Now, almost ten years later, Clarke can count the number of times she’s had sex on one hand. Three of them were out of obligation — her high school boyfriend, Finn, guilted her into it, and it wasn’t fun at all. Then there was the night with Niylah the park ranger on a camping trip. Then there was Lexa, whom Clarke dated for two years, and they only had sex once to try it out, but Lexa was a sex-repulsed ace, and that was more than fine with Clarke. Still, Clarke knows she’s not ace. She knows she wants a healthy sexual relationship with someone eventually, but she doesn’t know how to get there. She can’t be naked around someone without thinking of Marcus’ heavy body on top of her. Can’t look at her present self in the mirror without seeing her bruised and aching fourteen-year-old body. When she was sixteen, she tried to kill herself shortly after Marcus was finally convicted, but her mother found her and patched her up and sent her off to an in-patient program for two weeks. Clarke came out of it feeling better, well-medicated, with a treatment plan. She managed to graduate high school and do well in college. Now she has a job she enjoys, some friends, a good life, all told.  
  
But Marcus is still here, always with her even when she knows he’s still locked up for another couple years. He tells her how filthy she is, how ugly and stupid and wrong. Whenever there’s some quiet, he makes his way into her thoughts. She should have gone with her parents that day. She should have worn different shorts. She shouldn’t have walked around so much in her bikini. She shouldn’t have flirted with him, given him the wrong idea about her. There are so many things she could have done to prevent it.  
  
A few months ago, on the recommendation of the internet, she started going to a BDSM club. She heard that some people practice “radical intimacy” rather than sex, and it seemed like a path forward. Immediately she was uncomfortable with all the leather and spanking, the cheesiness of it, the performance. She didn’t know what she was looking for. So she watched the demos and drank virgin daiquiris she never let out of her sight (she doesn’t drink alcohol, nothing that might inhibit her). A girl named Raven approached her one night, and they found somewhere private to talk. She thought Raven was hitting on her maybe, but then realized she was only trying to be welcoming, had seen Clarke around, alone, and wanted to make sure she felt comfortable and accepted in the community. If there was something specific she wanted to try, Raven said she would be able to connect her.

“I read on the internet about —” She was shy at first, to admit what she wanted. “Re-creating a scene of something that happened to me. Do you know someone who might help me with it?”  
  
Raven took her right then through the club and introduced her to every dom she knew. At first Clarke was mortified; Raven didn’t put a label on anything, but Clarke got the impression she was seen as a sub in training, giving mini-interviews to doms. She tapped Raven’s back gently when she didn’t like someone. Many of the doms were too predatory and overly flirty. One invited her outright to join his harem. Another kissed her hand and called her “m’lady.”   
  
Then Raven took her to a room in the back, where a muscular, messy-haired dom in leather pants and no shirt was flogging a naked woman trapped in a stockade. The audience consisted of a couple dozen people drinking and mingling and half-watching the show. Clarke witnessed the demo with open curiosity, not bothered as she would be with porn, having come to a feeling of trust with this place, knowing the woman being flogged had a safeword, and watching the sharp eye of the dom as he assessed her body with each strike, then massaged over the welts he'd left behind.   
  
When the demo ended, everyone clapped. The sub was taken out of the stockade, and the dom whispered something in her ear. She smiled, and kissed his cheek, and seemed to thank him before making her way off-stage to get dressed. Clarke met her later on. Her name was Harper, and she asked Clarke out for coffee.  
  
They approached the dom as he was cleaning up. Right away Clarke liked him. He shook her hand, treated her like a regular person, and didn't make any assumptions about her role. His name was Bellamy. The conversation went along easily — Raven facilitating, and Clarke was learning she was very, very good at facilitating — and Clarke never tapped Raven’s back, so Raven said, “Do you want to tell Bellamy what you’re interested in?”  
  
In a normal conversation with normal people, Clarke might feel obligated to answer that question, being, as she is, habitually and nearly destructively obedient, but she knew that here, in this place, every question required an honest answer, and no honest answer had negative repercussions. Clarke could say no thank you, and Bellamy wouldn’t bat an eye.  
  
“I was raped when I was fourteen,” she said. “And I want to reenact it.”   
  
Whenever she tells other people what happened, they get a pitying or horrified look. Here, Raven hadn’t flinched, and Bellamy didn’t either. Didn’t even ask why she wanted the reenactment. He only nodded and gave her his phone number, not the other way around, so if she changed her mind he would have no way of contacting her. That was when she knew he was definitely the right choice.

She called him the next day and they agreed to meet up the following Thursday. They went out for dinner at a pizza place that didn’t serve alcohol. Bellamy offered to pay, and they sat in a quiet corner to talk about expectations. The place was busy but not noisy. He let her sit with her back to the wall, and he took notes in a little notebook while she described what had happened, blandly, without emotion. She’d told the story hundreds of times through the trial and with each new therapist. He nodded, and asked the occasional question for clarification. He was particularly interested in Marcus, how he acted, what he was like. Like an actor taking notes for a role, which, she guessed, was exactly what he was doing. Then he asked for her safeword, and when she paused, he took the liberty of explaining her options — safeword, RYG, RACK (which he did not recommend, given the circumstances), a specific tapping pattern if she chose to be gagged. In the end she liked the idea of a hard-stop. A safeword that would pull the plug and close the curtains, that she could utter and the whole thing would end.

“Orlando,” she told him. He nodded and wrote it down.   
  
Clarke booked a room at the local Hilton, and now she’s waiting for him. It’s almost four in the afternoon. The room looks almost exactly the same as it did in Orlando, except the TV and electronics are newer, and the paintings are different. Walking in here almost made her panic, but she used her coping skills and breathing exercises and now she’s fine. She’s wearing the same outfit she wore that day, a camp t-shirt and a pair of jogging shorts, with a bikini underneath. The bikini is new; she bought it for this occasion specifically, because she doesn’t wear bathing suits anymore, or go to pools or the ocean. Nowhere that she can be looked at the way Marcus once looked at her. The shirt and shorts are a little tight, but still fit. She can’t braid her hair the way she used to when she was a teenager; she’s worn it short for years now, so it’s harder to pull.   
  
A knock on the door jars her from the dark space she goes to when she idles. She knows she does the thousand-yard-stare thing that veterans do. Lexa used to tell her it was creepy. Clarke opens the door, squeezes the handle when she sees Bellamy. He’s wearing a green polo shirt and dark wash jeans, aviator sunglasses on top of his head, nearly the exact outfit she had described. He might be the size and rough shape of Marcus, but Bellamy’s eyes are so much kinder, his features softer, skin darker. He’s about the age Marcus was when it happened, but he looks so much younger. She thinks that might be a flaw in her memory. When she was fourteen, Marcus wasn’t an age, he was just old.  
  
“Hi,” she says, and steps aside to let him in. He’s carrying a duffel bag that he puts on the floor by the couch. The suite had been expensive, but Clarke figured the price was worth it.  
  
“How are you feeling?” he asks, keeping an arm’s distance from her. She’s surprised to find how eager she is to touch him, hug him hello, but stops herself. He's basically just an acquaintance, even if they happen to know intimate details about each other.  
  
“Scared.”   
  
He nods thoughtfully and doesn’t attempt to reassure her. The fear is part of it. She wants to ask him for a trial run first, so she can get used to his body, but if she gets comfortable, that might defeat the purpose.

"Any questions or anything?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "I want to get it over with."  
  
A normal person might be offended, but Bellamy seems to understand. He takes a seat on the couch. “Take your time. Let me know when you’re ready.”

She’s as ready as she can possibly be. She slumps down beside him, her arm touching his.

“This is so fucking stupid,” she says, the code phrase they decided on earlier. She was allowed to curse around Marcus. That was part of what she liked about him. He treated her like an adult, never punished her. She always sat this close to him, too, rested her head on his lap when they watched movies. Sometimes when she spent the night at his house while her parents were on a date, she would crawl into bed with him, and he would hold her until she fell asleep. It was only later she realized how strange that was, how easily and comfortably he touched her, how her parents should have never left her alone with him. It makes her sad to think that Marcus was the first and last non-related person she felt so casually intimate with.  
  
“Your parents just want to make you happy, you know that,” Bellamy says. It strikes her how much he sounds like Marcus — soft words with an authoritative edge, always didactic. And she's amazed how completely he slips into character from just her description. Even the way he’s holding himself is different, though she can’t articulate what exactly about him has changed.

"I  _know_ ," she says tersely, surprised at herself too, how easy it is to be fourteen again.  
  
“I just want to make you happy too, you know,” he adds, his heavy hand on her bare knee.

"I know," she says, sweetly this time, resting her head on his shoulder. She closes her eyes and feels reality shimmer, like time travel, her perception folding over onto itself.

“There’s been something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about,” Bellamy says, verbatim what Marcus had said. Bellamy wrote it down at the pizza place. Part of her wishes she was paying him, so she could tip him. She doesn’t really understand what he’s getting out of this.  
  
Here her memory splits. After the trial and all the therapy and thinking about it for so long, she’s convinced herself she had been disgusted by him, by his advances, that she fought him to keep her dignity. At least, that’s what she told everyone, and said it so many times that she started believing it herself. But now, here, she remembers it so differently. She’d been so eager to be alone with him, had felt so attracted to him in a way she’s never felt attracted to anyone since. She wanted to be wanted by him.   
  
“Yeah?” she says. At the time, her voice had been loud and confident. She was such an obnoxious kid.   
  
“You’re growing into such a beautiful woman, Clarke.”  
  
Sometimes Marcus got cheesy like that, suddenly serious, intense, and told her how brilliant and talented and special she was. It always made her deeply uncomfortable, put under a microscope. She felt so seen by him, all the time. He was always, always watching her.  
  
“Thanks,” she says, wrinkling her nose.   
  
“You’re not just beautiful though.” His hand inches up her thigh. “You’re sexy now. You know what sexy means?"

She nods. Her heart pounds now exactly as it did then.

"It's hard to be in the same room you anymore.” He says it like an insult.

She never wanted to do anything to upset Marcus. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”  
  
“I know you don’t, sweetheart, but it’s hard for me. It hurts.”  
  
She doesn’t remember it escalating this quickly. Marcus had been less forthright, more deceptive. Took his time. But this feels familiar, so maybe not. Maybe he had always been this forward, and it was just her who was slow to realize what was happening.  
  
“It hurts?” she asks.  
  
He takes her hand and puts it on the bulge of his pants. This she remembers clearly, trying to pull her hand away, and him holding it firmly in place. She can already tell Bellamy is bigger than Marcus.  
  
“You feel that? Feel how hard I am for you? That's what you do to me.”  
  
She nods, goes along with it as he moves her palm over his erection, as he tilts her chin toward him and kisses her. This is her greatest regret, her biggest secret: She went along with all of it. Didn’t put up even a little bit of a fight, was so eager to appease him. She feels tears prick the corners of her eyes, and for a second, Bellamy really is Marcus, and she really is fourteen, and this really is happening. He cups her crotch in his hand and she spreads her legs obediently.  
  
But she’s not fourteen. She’s not in Florida. She’s not with Marcus. She doesn’t have to appease anyone or do anything she doesn’t want to do. Not now, not ever.  
  
“Orlando,” she says.

Bellamy lets go immediately and stands up. His eyes are wide and concerned, waiting for her to give some cue as to what she needs next. He had asked her this, what he should do if she safewords. She told him to step away and wait silently for her to decide. She looks for any sign of irritation or anger, what she would expect from a man like him, so big and powerful and masculine, but senses none.  
  
“What would you do if I told you to leave?” she asks.  
  
“I’d leave.”  
  
“What if I never wanted to speak to you again?”  
  
“Then we'd never speak again.”  
  
“What if I just want to watch a movie on separate beds?”  
  
“Then we’ll watch a movie on separate beds.”  
  
“What do you want? What are you getting out of this?”  
  
He looks confused by the question, like he doesn’t get asked very often. “There’s a long answer and a short one. Which do you want?”  
  
“Short one now. Long one later.”  
  
“I like getting out of my own head. I like being helpful. If this isn’t helping you, I don’t want to do it.”  
  
She buries her face in her hands and breathes, presses her fingers into her eyes until she sees stars. She doesn’t have to do this.   
  
But — she kind of wants to. It’s been a long time since she’s felt allowed to want something, and she’s certainly never wanted sex. But she’s definitely attracted to Bellamy, and for once in her life, she wants to be touched.  
  
“It’s helpful. Or, it will be.”  
  
“I understand.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“I really do.”  
  
She suspects that’s part of the long answer. “Okay,” she says. “I’m ready.”  
  
He sits down again beside her, arms open waiting for her permission. She nods, and he returns to where his hands were, one between her legs, the other at the back of her neck. She puts her hand on his crotch. His cock has gone soft. She can feel the shift into the scene, Bellamy into Marcus. He kisses her again and she wonders briefly why he's not in LA auditioning his heart out. This time it feels different; he’s a little bit gentler with her, and she doesn’t like that, it’s not Marcus-y enough, so she bites his lip. He picks up on the silent request and kisses her more roughly.  
  
“Do you remember the talk we had?” he asks when he pulls away.  
  
She nods. Marcus had given her the birds and bees talk the year prior, which she thought even then was weird, considering her mom was a doctor. He was graphic about it, and showed her a video which he insisted was educational, but which she later realized was pornography. He had made her sit on his lap, and felt his erection against her ass, just as she had all the nights she'd fallen asleep with him, but she was too polite to say anything about it, and had taken it, disgustingly, as a compliment.   
  
“That’s the only way to fix this,” he says. “I won’t be able to be around you anymore if you don't let me touch you.”  
  
She can’t remember the exact moment she became aware of Marcus’ intentions. She thinks she slipped into a different place, then. One of her therapists once told her that some people are more inclined to accumulate trauma than others, so it’s possible she had PTSD before Marcus raped her. It might be true. She just knows she’s a different person than she would be if Marcus had never done this.  
  
“Right now?” she asks.  
  
In answer, he stands up and holds his hand out to her. She’s pretty sure Marcus got rough with her at this point, so when she takes Bellamy’s hand, she doesn’t move to standing right away, pulls a little to let him know he has to be forceful. He picks up on it quick, grabs her upper arm and hauls her to standing. His grip hurts; she stumbles to her feet.  
  
“You’re going to be a good girl for me, right?”  
  
She nods meekly. He drags her over to the nearest bed and throws her onto it. She should have messed up the sheets. When it had happened, both the beds were unmade, Abby’s makeup was on the counter, luggage spilled everywhere, and the room smelled like sunscreen. Clarke hasn’t been able to stomach the smell since, has to buy expensive stuff that smells like coconuts.  
  
Pleasure and shame wash over her, being manhandled like this. It’s so intense that she almost safewords again, but just realizing she has the option soothes her. It’s a sexual scenario. She’s allowed to be turned on by it.

Bellamy yanks off her shorts. She had been very specific about this next part. He pauses briefly, waiting for something — her to fight back, probably. Kick him and climb up the bed. She hadn’t told him whether she fought or not, only Marcus’ movements. Bellamy must assume Clarke struggled. The moment lasts only a second before he tugs her bikini bottoms off too. She’s self-conscious of her pubic hair now just as she was then, knew it was something, like your legs, you had to shave. Back then, having hair down there was new and strange. Now, she wishes she had shaved it, but the shame of it resonates, as well as the strange relief she feels when Bellamy, like Marcus, doesn’t seem to care.  
  
He presses his mouth to her cunt without warning and starts eating her out. At fourteen, Clarke felt awkward and confused by it, didn’t know how to orgasm and only understood the concept abstractly. Even later when she started dating Finn, he never once got her off. She honestly didn’t think a person could be objectively good at eating out, thought it was something on a per-person basis, that you had to get to know them, but Bellamy is without a doubt good at what he’s doing. It’s different than Marcus’ sloppy tongue and suction-y mouth. She hadn’t given Bellamy any details at all to go by, and that’s probably for the best, given how much she’s enjoying it. His tongue moves quickly and confidently over her clit. He presses two fingers into her and she's embarrassed by how quickly her orgasm approaches. It hasn't even been three minutes.  
  
She covers her hand with her mouth when she comes. Bellamy ropes an arm over her hips to hold her down. She'd only had some kind of proto-orgasm with Marcus. He went at her for what felt like hours but must have only been twenty minutes or so. She began hyperventilating around the ten-minute mark, body totally oversensitive, and moaned only because she knew she was supposed to, from the porn he'd shown her. The room began to spin and something cold spread through her chest. Marcus gave up shortly after and said something about next time making it better for her, when they'd have more time. 

When Bellamy stands, he pulls off his shirt, and leans down to press his mouth against hers. For a second while she came she’d been taken out of the scene; she’s only come on someone else’s mouth one other time, but now she’s back in Orlando, with Bellamy’s body crushing her on the bed, trying to keep up with his harsh kisses.  
  
He pulls away and searches her eyes. “Check in.”  
  
She blinks at him. He’s Marcus and Bellamy rolled into one right now. They hadn’t talked about this.   
  
“Why?”  
  
“You’re dissociating.”  
  
“How can you tell?”  
  
“You went away.”

"Sorry."  
  
He climbs off of her and pulls her to sitting, goes to the kitchenette and pours a glass of water from the tap. He sits beside her and makes her drink it. His hand is resting on her lower back, rubbing soothing circles. She leans into him.  
  
“You’d be okay if we stopped right now?” she asks. The water is wobbling in her shaking hand.  
  
“Of course. Do you want to?”  
  
“No. Just like knowing the option is there.”  
  
He kisses her temple. Her stomach floats, not in a bad way. She can feel her cheeks flush, and she chugs the water to keep him from noticing. He takes the glass from her hand and sets it on the table, then asks, “Ready?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
He climbs between her legs again, crushes her again — she’d been very specific about the crushing, the weight of Marcus’ body over hers as he shoved his tongue into her mouth. Here Bellamy tugs her shirt off, which she struggles to stop, fights a little, now, because she can; it’s not like he’d ever know she didn’t. And it feels good to fight him, know she can try to hurt him and probably won’t. She stifles a scream and he slaps her into silence. The crack stuns her, rings in her ears. He pauses to gauge her reaction, see if he went too far. She had told him there was some hitting involved, though Bellamy’s slap wasn’t as hard as Marcus’. Marcus’ left a handprint, made her ears ring. Bellamy’s was meant to briefly stun. When she shakes it off, a wave of desire hits her — she’s never wanted to be fucked by anyone as much as she wants Bellamy to fuck her right now.   
  
She gives him a little nod and he continues, tugs at the tied halter top of her bikini until it comes undone. He holds her at the throat as he ducks down and sucks her nipple into his mouth. She hardly had any tits back then. As he sucks and bites at her, he unbuckles his jeans and pulls his cock out. She and Bellamy traded test results before this, agreed to no condom to keep the moment more accurate. It had been so humiliating, after the rape, to take a pregnancy and STI test.

He shoves his cock into her. It doesn’t hurt now like it did then, but she starts to scream anyway, playing her role, and Bellamy claps a hand over her mouth. She bites him and he doesn’t budge, just pounds into her. She punches his chest with the sides of her fists and tries to wiggle up the bed, off his cock, but he follows her up the bed and grabs her by the throat to keep her still. If she had fought Marcus, who knows what he would have done. She had lain still and silent, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched wading through the pain. Now she can fight and kick and scratch and spit, knowing Bellamy won't go too far with her, fearless for the first time in her life.   
  
Bellamy’s cock is so big and feels so good that soon she can no longer struggle. Her screams turn into moans. She drags him into another kiss, breathless, deep and needy in a way she never kissed Marcus. He presses his forehead to hers. Their eyes meet. Marcus’ eyes were so shallow. You could look into his face for hours and see nothing at all behind them. He was impossible to read. He reminded her, especially during the rape, of an animal.  
  
Bellamy’s eyes run so much deeper. They seem so kind and bright. She’s never had an orgasm from penetration alone, but she feels one climbing up her back, and he must feel it too because he keeps doing whatever it is he’s doing that feels so good. Right now Marcus was saying things to her, filthy horrible things she’s forced herself to forget. She’s glad she didn’t tell Bellamy to do that, that she can enjoy this in silence. 

Clarke crests over her orgasm and cries out, and he buries his head in her shoulder and comes immediately after. She didn’t tell him what to do when it was over, how Marcus had cleaned up her broken body and told her that if she wanted to make him happy, she would never tell anyone. And if she never told anyone, he would touch her whenever she wanted, make her feel good all the time. She never told anyone that he sang "You Are My Sunshine" as he held her, that his phone rang and it was Abby asking if she should bring back any food. Marcus asked Clarke what she wanted. Clarke said McDonald's, a ten-piece chicken nugget and a large Diet Coke. She went into the bathroom and felt all of Marcus' semen come out of her, wiped the blood from her thighs. Her cheek throbbed and her throat hurt and between her legs was sore like she'd ridden a trotting horse. Marcus hung up the phone and knocked on the door to ask if she was okay. She said she was fine.

Bellamy rolls onto the bed beside her, on his back. “Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine,” she says. This time she means it. She laughs, a delighted, high-pitched laugh that she hasn’t heard come from her mouth since she was a kid. “I’m really fine.”  
  
She looks over and he’s smiling like he’s so proud, and she feels the floaty feeling again, and he asks, “What do you want now?”  
  
“Whatever you normally do after a scene.”  
  
“I was hoping you’d say that.”

He tells her to go to the bathroom while he gets ready, so she does, and while she's in there she takes off her bikini top, looks at herself naked in the mirror and doesn't see anything but herself, her present-day, beautiful self. When she comes back out, Bellamy is in his boxers and he nods to the bed, where he's turned the covers down. "On your stomach."

She lies down and he crawls on top of her, and she smells a burst of lavender, and his oiled hands are on her shoulders. He digs his thumbs into the back of her neck, her shoulder blades, all the way down her spine. She stifles her moans into the sterile-smelling pillow. Her body sinks into the mattress. This time when she slips away, it's a good feeling, like she'd been missing a piece of herself for so long and finally found it, and now she can be whole again. Bellamy moves over her entire body, down to her feet and back up, and when he's done, he leans over and kisses her cheek.

"How do you feel?" He rolls onto his side, temple propped on his hand. Not Marcus anymore, all Bellamy.

"Very good."

"This is where I ask for feedback for next time, but I have a feeling you don't want to do this again."

"Right, but." She surprises herself by blurting out, "I want to see you again."

He seems surprised too. "Really?"

"Maybe you could...teach me some stuff."

"Like what?"

"BDSM stuff."

"You're going to need to be more specific."

"I want to do something like this again, but not this. Rough and painful, but I'm allowed to say no."

"Yeah," he says, like he's pretending to be cool. "We could do that."

When Abby and Jake got back to the hotel room with McDonald's, Clarke was dressed in clean clothes, pretending to watch TV with Marcus. She doesn't remember much else. No one seemed to notice anything amiss. She remembers she couldn't sleep that night, listened to Marcus' snoring from the pull-out until the sun rose. The next day, Clarke tried to tell her mom in a round-about way what had happened, by asking rhetorical questions about sex, but Abby only answered impatiently as if put off by such a serious topic when they were supposed to be having fun. Clarke wondered much later if Abby did in fact know, but either didn't want to be right about her suspicions, having been secretly in love with Marcus herself for decades, or didn't want the ordeal of having to accuse the man she loved of something so horrible. In the end, it was Jake who figured it out, who saw the bruise on Clarke's upper arm on the last day of their trip. He asked what it was from and she said she didn't know. Marcus and Abby were out on a walk. Jake asked about the bruise again, this time a demand, veering on angry in a way she thought was directed at her, and not confirmation of what he suspected. His intensity broke her, and she started crying and apologizing, and finally he got the story out of her. She told him it wasn't Marcus' fault, it was hers for leading him on. Jake only held her and tried to calm her. By the time Abby and Marcus returned, the police had already arrived. 

"Can I ask for something?" Clarke says.

"Anything."

"Will you kiss me? As yourself. Not Marcus."

He smiles, and she wonders why his face isn't plastered on billboards selling overpriced perfume. He leans in and presses his lips to hers, gently, a light, dry kiss that's as innocent and easy as it feels being around him. 

"Now I want to know the long version," she says. 

"That requires cuddling."

She moves closer and tucks her head under his chin, and he throws the covers over them. She hasn't felt this relaxed around another person since Marcus. Lexa didn't like to cuddle, and Finn fidgeted too much. She can hear Bellamy's heartbeat, hear his voice reverberate through his chest. "I have a lot of codependency issues."

She almost laughs but stops herself just in time. Out of all the things he could have said, that someone he knew was once raped and this is his way of getting vengeance, or he was in an abusive relationship and this is how he regains control. But no. Codependency issues.

"I like taking care of people," he says. "I like being needed. I  _need_ to be needed. Otherwise I just feel, I don't know, worthless. I raised my sister, and my mom was an addict, so I took care of both of them. Then my mom died, and now my sister is making bank on Wallstreet, well-educated, happily married, three dogs. And I'm here, like, what do I do now? For a long time I kept looking for women to rescue. Then I'd get upset when I realized they were only using me, and the relationship would turn toxic. Suffocating. The first time it happened was with Gina, who'd just gotten out of an abusive relationship. Then Echo, who was a coke addict. When I started dating again, I realized I was looking for it in everyone I met, the thing I could latch onto, the thing they'd need me for. That's when I met Raven, and she recommended the BDSM scene, and it was like, everything made sense. I could act out all these fucked-up instincts so I wouldn't push them onto real relationships. I can make people happy, forget about myself for a minute, and just give in." 

She looks up at him. "So does that mean you're not seeing anyone?"

"Is that your takeaway from all this?"

"Answer the question."

He smiles again, like everything she says and does and is delights him. "No, I'm not seeing anyone."

"You know, we have this room until noon tomorrow. You want to order room service?"

"God yes. I'm starving." He reaches behind him for the menu on the nightstand and holds it above them so they can read it together.

Later, before bed, she might ask if they can have sex again, just normal sex, and she'll also ask if he wants to stay over and sleep in the same bed together. Tomorrow they can check out the continental breakfast. And there's a pool, too, she thinks. They should definitely go to the pool. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter, tumblr, and dw as bettsfic.


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